Bondi used binder stunt to cover-up secretive Epstein Files redaction project, documents reveal
Bondi is expected to appear before the House Oversight Committee on Friday, where congressional investigators plan to question her about her stewardship of the Epstein Files.
What initially appeared to be a failed political stunt by the Trump administration — gifting far-right influencers binders of material related to Jeffrey Epstein — now appears to have served another purpose entirely: providing cover for a massive redaction effort designed to protect the president.
Internal correspondence between federal agents, published as part of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, outlines exactly how former US Attorney General Pam Bondi used the public stunt to quietly launch the redaction project within the DOJ. In a public letter sent to FBI Director Kash Patel on Feb. 27, Bondi demanded that his bureau “deliver the full and complete Epstein Files to my office” in Washington, DC.
“By 8:00 a.m. tomorrow, February 28, the FBI will deliver the full and complete Epstein files to my office, including all records, documents, audio and video recordings, and materials related to Jeffrey Epstein and his clients, regardless of how such information was obtained,” Bondi wrote. “The Department of Justice will ensure that any public disclosure of these files will be done in a manner to protect the privacy of victims and in accordance with law, as I have done my entire career as a prosecutor.”
Patel went to great lengths to help prop up the facade of transparency, loading physical documents into a rented U-Haul so the full files could be transferred simultaneously. The operation, first reported on by ABC News in March 2025, was at the time characterized as a Trump-style media stunt, a cartoonish waste of time and resources meant to satisfy his supporters’ lust for the release of the Epstein Files.
But internal DOJ communications tell a different story. Officials made clear that the case file consolidation was intended to facilitate a massive redaction project that ultimately cost nearly $1 million in overtime pay alone. The process focused on redacting names of high-profile individuals like Donald Trump, while exposing the names and violating the privacy of hundreds of Epstein’s victims.
“Pursuant to the Attorney General’s letter dated February 27, 2025, FBI transferred all Epstein files out of the child sex trafficking case as well as all related Epstein cases from the New York Field Office to Washington Field Office for review,” the memo stated. “All redactions will be conducted under a hybrid of FBI Freedom of Information Act and Civil Litigation Standards.”
The Files eventually made their way to a field office in Winchester, Virginia, not Washington, where the agents assigned to the project were poorly trained on the hybrid redaction process. According to a whistleblower who contacted Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) last year, agents instead prioritized cataloging every mention of Trump and removing his footprint from the files.
“My office was told that these personnel were instructed to ‘flag’ any records in which President Trump was mentioned,” said Durbin. “Despite tens of thousands of personnel hours reviewing and re-reviewing these Epstein-related records over the course of two weeks in March, it took DOJ more than three additional months to officially find there is ‘no incriminating client list.’”
The determination that there is no client list — and not enough evidence to prosecute any of Epstein’s clients, accomplices, or co-conspirators — stems from Bondi’s rush-order redaction assignment. Emails contained within the Epstein Files detail how Patel would occasionally make requests for information, which would later be carefully used to nip any investigative threads in the bud.
When the redaction process first began, Patel asked agents on duty to determine whether there was any photo or video evidence that could be used for future prosecutions. Weeks later, an agent sent Patel a detailed and nuanced response in the negative.
“All videos and images from the case file and from Epstein’s residences and devices were reviewed for evidence of a crime,” the agent wrote. “Those reviews revealed no evidence from any of the searches we conducted or any of the files we reviewed that any videos or other images exist of any victims in this case being sexually abused. Nor did those reviews reveal any evidence that anyone other than Epstein and Maxwell participated in the sexual abuse of victims in this case.”
This specific finding — that there was no visual evidence that could incriminate anyone other than Epstein — was later cited more broadly in Bondi’s decision to close the case without pursuing further prosecutions, omitting the possibility that evidence could still exist in financial records, private emails, or other text-based documents in the Files.
The decision marked the end of an anti-climactic, whiplash-inducing chapter in Bondi’s saga with the Epstein Files. For a comprehensive breakdown of Bondi’s time at the DOJ — and how it became inexorably tied to an apparent cover-up for the Trump administration — American Freakshow has put together a timeline of the former attorney general’s “swan song.”
Bondi is expected to appear before the House Oversight Committee on Friday, where congressional investigators plan to question her about her stewardship of the Epstein Files during her brief tenure as Attorney General. Republicans on the committee have agreed to keep the interview off-camera and not under oath, a compromise Democrats say is unacceptable. Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ), who sits on the committee, said Bondi has much to answer for, and relegating the deposition to a transcribed interview as opposed to a recorded video is a disservice to the American public.
“We need to make sure that the [Republican] majority demands that Pam Bondi testify under oath and on video. We’ve been calling for this, but we have not received reassurances,” said Ansari. “It’s up to her whether or not she’s going to be honest. She’s been at the center of this. She has a lot of knowledge. She has an opportunity here to really course-correct and, at least, save herself in this cover-up.”
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